I envision the passing of history neither as being wholly cyclic or wholly linear. I envision it as a process of a growing garden where present and past overlap.
Some seeds of the recent past begin to flourish in the present until they overtake it. At one point what once was a thrilling beauty of their flowers becomes an all-consuming plague. At this point a protective reaction emerges from both the rest of the garden and new seeds flourishing
The rest of the garden struggles for its survival, so that the harmony in its variety perseveres; in this fight against the plague it bolsters its strongest specimens while sacrificing those who are superfluous. Meanwhile, the new seeds slowly overtake the plague with their juvenile, novel qualities.
Eventually the plague subsides. It shrinks and is absorbed by the garden’s luxuriant living forces. It finds it harmony with the rest of the garden’s specimens and its own place in it. From now on, it will flourish in its own thrilling and humbled way, creating new beautiful arrangements with the other plants, many having gone through this youthful process and many times having joined the struggle to protect the garden’s integrity while renewing themselves.
And so, while the time’s novel specimen begins to thrive in its initial fascination and become its own plague, what was universal finds its place in the gardens of overlapped past and present, developing its niche in ways that perhaps are infinitely more thrilling than what was possible during its supremacy.
Or perhaps this is rather an ideal condition that doesn’t acknowledge other tendencies of history: the old becomes obsolete and abandoned, its growth stumped as it loses universality. Meanwhile the new all-encompassing, taken as matter of fact, becomes homogenising, and amnesia-inducing, until it itself is stumped by the next wave of “progress”.